


Sounds Like Noise

by thalia_muse_of_comedy



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29676396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thalia_muse_of_comedy/pseuds/thalia_muse_of_comedy
Summary: "The stranger’s garish orange hair would catch anyone’s attention at least a few times. With a roll of Tsukshima’s eyes and a giggle from Yamaguchi, they had apologized for keeping Tobio from making new friends."-----------------Kageyama and Hinata aren't great at thinking on the fly
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 9
Kudos: 65
Collections: Kagehina Exchange





	Sounds Like Noise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sporadic_obsession](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sporadic_obsession/gifts).



> OH MY GOD DANNY DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT WAS TO KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT?! ANYWAY TITLE OF THIS SONG COMES FROM NATIVE TONGUE BY PARAMORE!!! IT WAS SUCH A JOY TO BE ABLE TO WRITE SOMETHING FOR YOU!!!!

Tobio is trying to think of a way to end Tsukishima’s and Yamaguchi’s lives as he stares at their retreating figures. They park themselves at an empty high-top table on the other end of the dim bar they had decided to come to  _ together _ . 

Yes, that had been the plan, but Tsukishima had said he was sick of watching him make eyes at the same stranger all evening. Tobio had argued that he wasn’t. Rather, the stranger’s garish orange hair would catch anyone’s attention at least a few times. With a roll of Tsukshima’s eyes and a giggle from Yamaguchi, they had apologized for keeping Tobio from making new friends.

From the table, the multiple zippers of Yamaguchi’s leather jacket catch the light as he gives Tobio a very enthusiastic thumbs up. For his part, Tsukishima lifts his glass in a mock toast to Tobio’s health and dwindling sanity. Tobio shakes his head and avoids sending the pair any rude finger gestures from across the room.   
Turning in his stool, he faces the bar again. His beer is more than halfway empty. He weighs the pros of cons of killing the beer in one go. If he wanted to, he could finish his beer and leave without his friends. 

More importantly, he could go before he could be actually bullied into talking to the redheaded man he has indeed been watching all night. Tobio had watched him talking to at least three different groups of people, a real social butterfly. A couple of times throughout the evening, they had locked eyes while the other man had been mid-laugh. Even from such a distance, Tobio could tell his eyes held the kind of gaze that could burn a person right out of their skin. In passing, Tobio had wondered how people could survive having those eyes on them for more than a brief moment. He wasn’t keen on discovering the answer for himself.

“Is this seat taken?” a voice on his left startles Tobio. His beer bottle stutters on the table, but he avoids disaster with quick, sure fingers wrapped around it. Assured that it won’t be spilling all over the bar (or worse all over him), Tobio turns his attention to the person who had spoken.

The redheaded stranger’s smile quirks up to one side, silently laughing at how Tobio had jumped. His brilliant brown eyes glow where the light catches them, and Tobio’s tongue glues itself to the roof of his mouth. 

“Hi,” the stranger says. He has the barstool in both hands when he again asks, “I was wondering if this seat was taken?”

Still incapable of speech, Tobio shakes his head. 

With a quiet crow of happiness, the redhead swings his lithe body onto the barstool. His legs dangle, and he indulges in a few childlike kicks. When he returns to being an adult, he tells Tobio, “oh cool, I thought maybe your friends were going to come back. Ditched you, did they?”

That seems to be the key to unlocking Tobio’s mouth. He finds himself saying, “yeah they ditched me. It’s whatever, though. They can go be assholes together.”

“Damn right,” the stranger agrees with a low laugh. It’s golden as it leaves his mouth, and Tobio wants to tuck it into his pocket. 

“I’m Hinata.”

“Kageyama,” Tobio responds as they dip their heads a few millimeters in acknowledgement. 

One of Hinata’s eyebrows lifts as he studies Tobio’s face with a bit too much intensity. His mouth is shaped like a question, but he addresses the bartender to order himself a rum and coke. After his order, he turns his scrutiny back on Tobio, “have we met before?”

Tobio is a thousand percent sure he would remember someone as beautiful as Hinata, but he has a pretty good idea where Hinata might recognize him from. 

Shy, Tobio just tells him, “no, I don’t think so.”

As the bartender slips Hinata’s drink on the bar, he whines, “it’s not that I don’t believe you, but this is going to bug me all night. Are you sure we haven’t met before?”

Tobio inclines his head to gesture at Hinata’s nest of orange waves and says, “I wouldn’t forget hair like that.”

Hinata lifts a hand to one of the swoops and concedes defeat, “I guess you’re right. Are you from around here?” He takes a large sip of his rum and coke. His eyes pinch a fraction as he discovers what Tobio already knows: the bartender has a heavy hand.

As for the question Hinata asked, he hedges, “not really. My friends are visiting from Sendai and wanted to come to this neighborhood.”

Hinata hums, his grin growing, “it does have it’s own charm, doesn’t it? This place, too.”

Tobio nods in agreement. As per the rules of conversation, at least according to everyone that Tobio knew, he asked, “and you? You seem pretty comfortable here, so I assume you are.”

Hinata kicks his legs again, and Tobio attempts to balance the image of this young man and his childish behaviors. The dissonance is endearing. 

“Yeah, I live around here. I work the front desk of the fancy foreign hotel up the block.”

Tobio finds himself groaning in misery, and Hinata misinterprets the sound, “well sorry my job is so boring to talk about. I’ll have you know-”

Tobio feels his face heat up, and he puts up his hands in defence, “No, shit, sorry, I just thought about how you probably have to speak English all the time.”

Hinata’s face freezes mid tirade and a string of laughter unspools instead. 

“Are you allergic to English or something? I think you’re getting a rash.” He points a finger at Tobio’s absurdly red face. 

So embarrassed that he’s sure his ears are ringing, Tobio wishes the empty beer bottle was full and cool against his skin. Right now, he wouldn’t be above pressing it to his face. 

“Alright, alright,” Hinata concedes after knocking back the rest of his drink, “I’ll forgive you, now that I’ve had a good laugh. Do you want another beer?” Without waiting for Tobio to actually answer, Hinata catches the bartender to order two beers of the same brand Tobio had been drinking. She quickly pulls them out and plops them in front of the pair.

“So now, you know I talk to rich Americans all day. What do you do?”

Like pulling teeth, Tobio answers, “I play volleyball.” He wasn’t exactly famous, but the niche professional volleyball filled did mean that Tobio was used to being spotted on the street.

Hinata rolls the beer between his hands, the condensation painting a sheen onto his palms. His eyebrow quirks up again like it had before, “are you ever on t.v.?”

Tobio nods and takes a gulp of his beer to avoid talking. He was proud to play volleyball at such a high level with such a good team, but he wishes volleyball was the only part of it. With being a professional athlete, there was a level of scrutiny that Tobio could never get used to. Over the years, he has been told time and time again that he needs to be more approachable, more personable. He does his best for his younger fans, who really only share his passion for the sport. It’s the adults that are harder to please, with their expectations and alternate versions they carry of him in their heads. Watching Hinata process his answer, he wonders what kind of new expectations he’ll have for their conversation.

Hinata surprises him when he snaps his fingers and says, “That’s it! You’re a setter right? I watched a bit of your team’s last match a couple of days ago.” He heaves out a dramatic sigh, “mystery solved!” 

Putting his hands up in a mock set, Hinata tells him, “the dump you did in the fourth set had me cackling. It was such an asshole move. It was like  _ dink, huh, tap tap _ on the floor. Had me going crazy.”

Tobio didn’t exactly understand what in the world HInata was saying, but the combination of hand movements and facial expressions had him chuckling deep in his chest. Catching Tobio’s eye, Hinata blushed and sheepishly smiled. 

“Thanks,” Tobio decides to say when Hinata is done. He seemed excited to talk about volleyball, so Tobio asked, “Do you like volleyball?”

“Yeah, I think it’s a cool sport,” Hinata rubs the back of his neck, still a little shy from his outburst. “I played it until the end of high school. I switched to doing theater in university, though.”

Tobio caught the way Hinata said "theater" with the same reverence and fervent ardor that Tobio would say the word “volleyball.”

“Is that what you studied in university,” Tobio asks. 

Hinata shakes his head, “No, I’m studying English. Theater’s more a hobby.”

“Is it? It sounds like you really like it.”

He laughs, “I haven’t said anything about it yet.”

To Tobio, Hinata doesn’t need to say anything more in order for him to see the love that wants to jump out of Hinata. He seems to shine with how much he wants to gush about it. Tobio finds himself wanting to learn more.

“Do you act or…” he finds he doesn’t know much about theater.

Hinata perks up, and his smile fully blooms, “I’m a stagehand! Though I’ve been a prop master a few times!”

With minimal prompting from Tobio, Hinata jumps into stories about joyfully threatening the lives of careless actors. He recounts several “black-out” misadventures. With full sound-effects, he tells Tobio about the time he had to sprint full-tilt to move a rolling steamer trunk and ride it across the stage because the rookies kept leaving it out during the scene transition. 

“That earned me the nickname ‘Ninja-Shouyou,’” Hinata brings his hands up to his face, embarrassed about praising himself.

Each story is a piece of gold placed gently into Tobio’s waiting palms. He finds that he could sit in this noisy, dim bar on this hard barstool forever as long as Hinata was peeling back the curtain of not only the stage but also the passion he seemed to have for it.

Hinata finishes his beer and smiles at Tobio. His head dips to one side, his eyes hazy around the edges. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he declares and slides off his barstool like a noodle. As Hinata walks away to the bathroom, Tobio orders them both a glass of water. He places Hinata’s water on the coaster his empty beer bottle once sat on and sips his own. 

The evening is going far better than Tobio could have ever imagined when Tsukishima and Yamaguchi had abandoned him. Remembering his friends, he cranes to look for them over his shoulder. Yamaguchi looks up at the same time and catches Tobio’s eyes. After smacking Tsukishima in the shoulder, they both give him double thumbs up to encourage him. Of course, they had been watching him talk with Hinata. Tobio lifts his hands in a silent plea for guidance on what to do next, but his friends just laugh at him. Yamaguchi cheers something, but he’s too far away for Tobio to hear. Probably, he was wishing him luck.

He feels Hinata slide wordlessly back into his seat. Tobio turns his attention back to him to instruct him to drink the water, but the words die on his lips when he sees that Hinata looks much more sober and pale.

“You okay?” he asks. He hopes Hinata didn’t throw up or something in the bathroom.

Hinata flits his eyes to Tobio’s and back to his water before bringing it to his lips with a shaky hand. 

To fill the silence, Tobio teases HInata, “did you puke? I didn’t think you were that dru-”

“Hey! I can hold my liquor just fine, thank you,” Hinata fires back with no hint of any slurring. Tobio has no choice but to believe him.

“Okay, geez. Are you okay, then?”

Hinata seems to have stopped shaking, and he waves a hand to dismiss Tobio’s concern. “Yeah, just some weirdo tried to hit on me in the bathroom.”

“Oh,” Tobio says, disgust dripping out of his mouth similar to how it would out of Tsukishima’s. 

Hinata waves a dismissive hand, even though his smile is too sharp and wobbly at the same time. “It’s whatever that kind of shit happens all of the time.”

The idea that Hinata has to deal with creeps makes something in Tobio spike in anger, “well, that sucks.” His voice shocks the both of them; it’s sharp and protective. The cut of it embarrasses Tobio.

A real laugh blooms out of Hinata’s chest, rich and deep like his dazzling eyes. “It does suck doesn’t it,” he agrees. 

Changing the subject, Hinata asks, “so where are your asshat friends sitting? I should thank them.”

If Tobio wasn’t blushing before, he was now. Hinata’s words made him think it was very likely that Tobio would be leaving tonight with his number plugged into his phone. They both swivel to look at the rest of the bar. He’s about to point out Tsukishima and Yamaguchi at their high table, when Hinata lets out an impressive string of curses.

“What’s up?” 

“The creep’s walking over here,” Hinata squeaks, momentarily shocking Tobio. He didn’t know Hinata’s voice could go that high. 

Recovering quickly, he follows Hinata’s sightline. It doesn’t take much effort to notice the greasy man navigating around tables so full there is hardly a place to step. His eyes are unnerving as they train on Hinata and fall on Tobio, sizing him up.

Hinata says in a rush, “can you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Can you, like, pretend to be my boyfriend,” he sounds panicked, talking even faster as the creep edges toward them.

“Ha?” is all Tobio can manage to reply.

“You know!” Hinata spits out. “Make him lose interest and all that.”

Tobio nods, hoping Hinata will see him in his periphery, but now Tobio is beginning to panic as well. “What should we do?”

Hinata swivels in his chair to face Tobio but still watches the creep in his button-down with too many buttons undone. He grabs Tobio’s hand, but the move appears to be too subtle to deter their approaching enemy. It will only be a few steps until the man will be close enough to call out to Hinata, so Tobio does the only thing he can think to do to send the message of Hinata’s unavailability.

He kisses Hinata. When their lips meet, Hinata lets out a startled noise, but he doesn’t push Tobio away. The grip on his hand tightens. Tobio eases the pressure he’s pressing to Hinata’s mouth to make the sudden kiss less forceful. He feels Hinata’s soft lips move against his for a second before they are both pulling away. 

Tobio opens his eyes to see Hinata smiling at him, a bright blush clashing with his orange waves. The hand on his squeezes and slackens but doesn’t let go.

“Warn a guy,” Hinata chides, but his voice is soft.

“Sorry. I panicked.”

Hinata shakes his head and hums, “yeah, me too.” His eyes look like they want to swallow Tobio whole. For his part, Tobio finds he would gladly fall off the side of the earth for Hinata. He notices he’s been staring at Hinata (and Hinata has been staring at him), so he coughs to clear his throat and break the spell. 

Subtly, Hinata looks for the man they were avoiding. When he can’t find him immediately, he abandons subtlety in favor of whipping his head around to look around the room. His eyes land over Tobio’s shoulders where the main entrance is. 

“He’s leaving,” Hinata whispers like Tobio is his partner in crime. He finds he enjoys the levity of it. 

“Nice” is the only thing Tobio can think to say. It makes Hinata giggle for the first time, and Tobio decides he’s already truly gone.

Hinata lets go of Tobio’s hand, the warmth receding with it. Tobio watches Hinata visibly deflate as he finishes his water. Without the tension of impending (and actualized) awkwardness, he looks tired. 

Catching Tobio watching him, Hinata sighs and says, “I think I’m going to head out. I have to work a matinee tomorrow.” His smile is a little sad, like he doesn’t really want to go. 

Tobio wants to snatch Hinata’s hand back. He promises himself that this time, he’ll pay attention to the way it fit in his. He wants to calculate the size and shape of Hinata’s fingers and palms; he’ll catalogue where the calluses are and how they’re different from Tobio’s volleyball ones. 

Instead, Tobio says, “I should walk you home.”

Shock dances across Hinata’s face before something darker and self-assured takes its place. His voice is deeper than Tobio’s heard all evening when he says, “So forward, Kageyama, trying to invite yourself over. We’ve only just met.” The words pretend to be an admonishment, but they sound like anything but as they brand themselves into Tobio’s brain. He wonders if Hinata is really just teasing him, or if he really thinks Tobio is trying to get himself invited in for coffee tonight. Not for the first time in his life, Tobio wants to be able to play by the rules of conversation that he can never fully grasp. The fact is that he can’t properly bump what’s been served to him.

“No,” Tobio says, because it’s the truth. Rather, he was thinking-

“I want to make sure that creep doesn’t follow you home,” he explains. 

The dark heat leaves Hinata’s gaze and his words when he replies, “oh, yeah, that’d be nice of you. You sure?” He plays with the empty glass between his hands again, but the condensation is long gone.

“Yeah, I’d hate for you to be axe-murdered on your way home.”

Hinata hums and laughs, “I’d be impressed if he had an axe.”

“Until you’re dismembered in his fridge,” Tobio volleys back. 

That finally makes Hinata wrinkle his nose in distaste, “yeah, much better for you to walk me home. You gonna tell your friends?”

Tobio rolls his eyes and says, “probably should. They'll leave without me either way, though.”

Hinata laughs again as he tries to close out both of their tabs. A spark of a fight brews between them silently as they try to intimidate the other into backing off. Hinata’s faster with his cash than Tobio with his card, so he doesn’t push it. He wasn’t giving up the fight; he just didn’t want to force the bartender into watching them squabble any longer.

Together, they walk over to Tsukishima and Yamaguchi, who are grinning like twin cheshire cats. Tobio glares at them from behind Hinata, but they have been immune to it for years. 

“Who’s this?” the pair asks in tandem, Yamaguchi purring and Tsukishima feigning disinterest. 

Hinata begins to joke, but Tobio catches his quick as lightning.

“I’m his-”

“Don’t you start. This is Hinata. I’m walking him home.”

Tsukishima raises a critical eyebrow and asks, “are you staying for a cup of tea?”

Hinata’s unabashed laughter surprises Tobio. He watches him lean down to whisper to the pair like he had whispered earlier to Tobio. 

“I tried, but he’s assured me he is only interested in making sure I don’t end up in someone’s fridge.”

Yamaguchi chirps, “you could end up in his fridge.”

Waving the thought away, Hinata says, “Kageyama doesn’t look like he has the stomach for that sort of thing.”

That makes Tsukishima laugh. With his approval won, he waves Tobio and Hinata away. “We’ll probably head out soon, ourselves. See you tomorrow, Kageyama.”

“It was nice to meet you, Hinata,” Yamaguchi says as he slips his leather jacket back on. “Don’t take a bite out of Kageyama, eh? We need him to show us around tomorrow.”

Tobio walks away without telling his friends goodbye, and Hinata squawks as he runs to catch up. 

The outside air feels nice on Tobio’s warm face. The trains are still running, so the streets still have plenty of people mulling about. Reluctantly, Tobio pulls out a face mask from the pocket of his light jacket. Hinata catches the movement.

“Are you feeling sick or something? I swear, if you kissed me while you have a cold,” Hinata says, but he doesn’t finish the threat. 

Not thinking about the weight of the truth, Tobio answers, “no, dumbass, I just don’t like being recognized.”

As they continue walking, Hinata focuses on the wrong part of the sentence. “‘Dumbass,’” he says mostly to himself, “buy a man a couple of drinks and he calls me a dumbass.” If not for 98% of their conversation this evening, Tobio would have been worried about actually upsetting him. Instead, he lets out a petty laugh. 

Hinata glares up at him. After a moment, his expression softens. “You don’t like being recognized?”

Tobio nods.

“Why not? If I was famous, I’d eat the attention right up,” Hinata shares. Rolling his eyes, Tobio decides it’s a very Hinata thing to say. 

He decides he doesn’t mind telling Hinata about it, “Well, I’m not really famous-”

“You’re pretty well known in the right circles, I bet.”

“Fine, sure.”

Hinata nudges him with an elbow; the contact makes Tobio want to hold his hand again. “You were saying,” Hinata prompts.

“Oh, um. It’s really uncomfortable for me. I don’t really know what to say or do when strangers want to talk to me.”

“You don’t have any PR training or something?”

“Ugh, I mean we do, but it’s-” Tobio isn’t sure how to explain how weird it is to talk to someone who thinks they know him just because they saw him on the television. Those shallow attempts at conversation always leave him floundering. 

Trying not to overthink it or drag the mood down, Tobio manages to tell Hinata that much after a few moments of silence.

“Is that why you were awkward about me remembering you from t.v.?”

Tobio kicks a rock down the street just to buy himself some time. “Yeah,” he decides, “but it’s not like either of us got hung up on it. I enjoyed talking to you.”

Hinata grabs Tobio’s hand and gives it a firm squeeze before letting go.

Before long, they arrive at Hinata’s apartment complex. In silence, they climb up the stairs to Hinata’s apartment. Awkwardly standing in front of the door, Hinata holds out his hand. “Your quest is complete,” he says sagely, “now you can have my phone number.”

“You would have given it to me even if I hadn’t walked you home,” Tobio teases, feeling bold. 

“Maybe I don’t want to give it to you now,” Hinata counters, but he doesn’t retract his hand. Tobio rolls his eyes and plops his unlocked phone into Hinata’s waiting palm. He makes quick work of inputting his number and even throws up a peace sign as he snaps a contact photo. 

He catches Tobio’s judging eyes and explains, “in case you forget what I look like.”

Tobio doesn’t deign to tell him how silly that would be. Instead, he accepts his phone back and tells Hinata he’ll text him once he’s on the train.

“You better,” Hinata warns. He studies Tobio for a moment before reaching up to unloop one of the elastics of the mask covering Tobio’s face. He smiles when Tobio’s mouth is revealed. The mask falls off Tobio’s ear as Hinata pulls him down to kiss him. 

The hand on Tobio’s face threatens to burn right through his skin and brand him as Hinata’s. He can’t understand how a couple hours of conversation could lead Tobio to welcome the idea of being marked by Hinata, but the feeling is undeniable. 

Hinata’s lips lead him. They push, and they pull away for fractions of seconds before renewing their fervor. He tastes like beer and feels like a summer night. While against Hinata, Tobio thinks time has been suspended in the heat of their collison. It’s as if they have broken the clock of the universe to serve their own agenda. 

The illusion of being gods outside the reach of time evaporates when Hinata pulls back far enough for Tobio to get the message. He’ll blame it on the lack of oxygen to his brain later, but Tobio traps the hand on his face with one of his own. He quickly kisses Hinata’s palm before letting both of their hands drop. 

Hinata whines and fists both of his hands into Tobio’s jacket. “How are you even real?!” he asks as he shakes Tobio, who swats his hands away in retaliation.

Embarrassed, he barks, “I could say the same thing about you!”

“Oh my god, shut up, you’ll wake up all my neighbors.”

Tobio huffs, “ _ you _ started yelling first.”

Hinata narrows his eyes at Tobio before tugging him down for one more, quick kiss before finally letting go to dig out his house keys. He unlocks the door and opens it a crack before turning back around to address Tobio.

“You’ll text me on the train?”

Tobio nods.

“You’ll call me tomorrow?”

“You’re the one who’s busy tomorrow; you call me,” Tobio says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket and ducking his head. 

“Fine, but that means you’re taking me out next week,” Hinata counters with a grin.

“You work fast,” Tobio teases. 

Hinata tilts his head in thought and says, “not as fast as I want. Goodnight, Kageyama.” He steps into his apartment.

“Goodnight, Hinata.”

Hinata opens his mouth to say something, but Tobio cuts him off, “I already said I’d text you.”

Playfully glaring at Tobio again, Hinata closes his mouth and sticks out his tongue. The door closes as Tobio is still processing the childish act. He picks up the now dirty face mask and crams it into the pocket of jacket. He doesn’t worry about being recognized as he runs to catch his local train line’s last train for the night. Instead, his brain replays Hinata sticking out his tongue.  _ Cute, cute, cute,  _ plays in his head like a broken record, but he doesn’t mind being stuck on Hinata Shouyou.


End file.
